The Gensokyo We Live In
by Spooky Standards
Summary: Gensokyo. A land of shrine maidens, cute girls and legends as experienced by a teenage university student who just wanted to go to the supermarket to pick up some food for a Friday night dinner.


There was hardly a cloud in the night sky, the moon was shining bright above the bamboo shoots, a soft wind was blowing through the dark bamboo forest and everything seemed peaceful.

Everything except for the desperate breaths of a running teenager and demented, barely feminine roaring laughter accompanied by two sets of running bodies, one of them human while the other was clearly the sound of a beast.

Takemiya Kyou, nineteen years old. University student, no particular goal in life, running from a monster in a forest in the middle of who knew where. One moment, he had been out shopping, had stopped to help up a girl who he was pretty sure was injured. The next thing he knew, he was here, in the middle of this bamboo forest and there was a monster out to get him.

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Tell me, do you believe in being spirited away?

It's really strange, how these mortals give it a name. It's almost as if by giving it a name, by calling it something, it makes all the strange disappearances more acceptable somehow. I always found it somewhat stupid, even when I was alive.

But enough about that. Let's not get our heads stuck on things that don't really matter, and instead, let me talk about this completely random kid who I'm definitely not about to kidnap.

I'm going to preface this by announcing that he had no special traits which really stood out to me whatsoever. He didn't have any sort of aura of confidence nor did I suspect him of hiding an awesome power. He was a regular university student at some outside world institute called Osaka university, so it wasn't like he was remarkable even by mortal standards. Instead, I chose him out of simple convenience. I needed a human from the outside world and he was the one who seemed the easiest to trick. In short, I suppose I'll need to admit I lied. I did see something in him that stood out to me: a possibility of being extremely gullible.

Oh, and in case none of you caught that, I was being sarcastic. This kid is totally going for a ride on the magic carpet.

Despite his extreme idiocy, I didn't just go right up to him and take him to Gensokyo. I'm much more clever than that, thank you very much. Much like the patient predator, I trailed him, examined him, watched his every move. I knew more about his daily life and schedule than he probably consciously knew himself. For example, he would wake up at seven in the morning if he has morning classes, ten if he didn't. He would make himself a simple breakfast of toast and eggs, eat while reading the daily news on his laptop, head out and take the train to the university. He would attend his classes until lunchtime, where he would head to either a local ramen store or beef bowl place for lunch. He would then take more classes until five in the afternoon, when he would hop back on the train and head home.

When he gets home, he would take a bath. Don't ask the details, I'm not a pervert. I don't watch him in the bath; It's not like I can tell you that he prefers Naive Aloe Extract shampoo and that he likes to hum really obscure songs while bathing, or that his humming voice is really really bad. Wait, forget I said that. I'm most definitely not a pervert.

Did I mention I'm most definitely not a pervert and that I definitely didn't watch him in the bath?

In any event, most of his week looks like this. On Wednesdays he would head out and drink with some friends, and on Fridays he would head to a convenience store to buy groceries for the week. He seemed like a normal, good kid, and I almost felt bad for him for what I was about to do.

Almost.

See, Youkai need to eat. They need to eat humans to survive and before anyone says anything about the cruelty of such I'm just going to remind you that it's not different from how humans eat plants and animals. I think a popular tv show in the outside world that this kid liked to watch once asked: "Do you remember how many pieces of bread you've eaten in your life?"

Do you?

I don't remember how many humans get eaten in Gensokyo.

The problem for Youkai, however, is that eating humans there is highly frowned upon. Most of them congregate in a single village, and there they're being protected by a were-hakutaku who could probably thrash most of the youkai that decided that the human village was an easy breadbasket.

That's why in Gensokyo, for the youkai, humans from the outside world who get pulled into Gensokyo are the best. There are no families there to grieve for them, no friends to avenge them. Nobody will know that piece of bread existed except for the youkai eating it, and nobody will be there to judge them for their action of eating a human.

Sorry kid, but Youkai gotta eat.

I decided to strike on a Friday night, right when he was heading to the store. It was the only time of the week when I could confirm that it would be nighttime and he would be relatively alone walking down the street. I was on the ground, appearing in what I was pretty sure was relatively normal attire for the outside world. I looked totally natural. I was on the ground, giving out gasps of pain clutching my foot, trying to give the impression that I sprained it when I tripped on something. Naturally, a kid like him's gotta be the gentleman and take my hand right?

I think I hid my smirk pretty when when he came over, asked if I was alright, and offered me a hand to help me up. I sealed his fate when I took that hand and pulled him right through the boundary, right into Gensokyo.

All according to Keikaku.

Keikaku means plan, by the way.

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Running for his life, Kyou really didn't have much leeway to get his bearings or even to try and figure out where he was. Any idea of long term planning was taken away by the short term thought of getting away from the monster chasing him.

It was getting closer; he was sure of that. The monster was getting nearer and nearer, her demented laughter growing louder with every passing step.

His luck had to run out eventually, and suddenly, just as he turned back to try and catch a glimpse of the monster that was after him his foot caught upon an uneven patch of dirt – or a stone? A boulder? He wasn't sure, something had tripped him, that was all the rational part of his mind could deduce as he fell to the ground.

Turning on his back and looking up, Kyou saw the monster head right towards him, a strange creature he could not make out clearly with a horn jutting form its head. Suddenly, it let out a howl of anger or fear as the sky above him, dark just moments ago, lit up in orange light. Looking up at the sky, he saw a majestic bird of fire soaring though the sky.

Kyou only had a moment to marvel at the majesty of the phoenix before the monster redoubled its efforts and pounced upon him. There was only a brief moment in which Kyou could see the monster jump right for him before he lost consciousness.

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The Gensokyo we Live In

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Prologue: Spirited Away on a Friday Night


End file.
